Les Elemens: Marais and Rebel - Palladian Ensemble - The Observer

Heard at the Wigmore Hall last month, this programme of virtuoso French chamber music by Marin Marais and Jean-Féry Rebel gives an overdue airing to early eighteenth-century Gallic masters with as much virtuosic gusto as the talented ensemble who do them so proud. Rebel's Les Elemens opens with perhaps the most thrilling dissonance then heard, while the Marais suites both charm and provoke, moving a Florentine monk to protest that they 'stir up unbridled youth to lust, and profane the temple of God against all propriety'.